What Lincoln Said

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.

Lincoln is credited with these words, but these days they are my words. Walking up and down the stairways and in and out of classrooms of Calvary Bible School, I am love, love, loving this station of my life.

Even as I cry and wrestle with class material and tweak time to grade papers, and talk with young ladies on my couch or on a walk, and feel completely drained every night, I love it. And though I have searched long for formulas and answers to hand out, I am happy to find again that usually the answers we need are found on our knees, hands open, faces toward Him who loves us and for whom nothing is too much.

Recently

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness could we but see – and to see we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by the covering, cast them away as ugly, or heavy or hard. Remove the covering and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, by wisdom, with power.

Welcome it, grasp it, touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you. Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty – beneath its covering – that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven.

Courage, then, to claim it, that is all. But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are all pilgrims together, wending through unknown country, home.

And so, at this time, I greet you. Not quite as the world sends greetings, but with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you now and forever, the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.

—

This letter was written by Fra Giovanni Giocondo to his friend, Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi on Christmas Eve, 1513.